Circle
by SoundGeare
Summary: With Hyrule safe and his memories complete, Link is finally able to settle down as he has longed to for so long. Faced by an old figure from nightmares, Link learns there can be no freedom from fate. Part three of the Memorial Trilogy. Part two of the Cyclic Quadrilogy.
1. The Beginning is the End

And so it begins...

And so it continues...

Here is a merging of timelines that, though long veiled, has always been in store.

Truthfully, this has always been the goal, Circle. I wrote Until I Remember and What I Forgot as prologues. Those were only to provide characters. I wrote The Inkspot as a building block, to clarify my intent before stepping into this. I've had Circle through various stages of planning since I began writing fanfiction nearly two years ago. It's taken that long to lay grounds for it, but finally Circle is here.

Though many stories came before, and many will come after, my intention has always been for Circle to be my fanfiction masterwork. I can only hope that I translate it well enough from what has roamed my head these past two years.

* * *

Link looked around at the festivities and smiled. The milling about of people cast a throng of smiling voices into the air. Link didn't know many of the people here. In fact, most of them were people he didn't know. That didn't matter to Link, though. It didn't matter at all.

All he cared about were the people who he did know. There was Talon, standing with a pair of relatives. They chattered at him, but Link could tell from this distance that the man was preoccupied. Ingo wore fine clothes, and wandered about the area. Link couldn't tell if he was glad of anything, for this was Ingo, but at least the man seemed without grievance.

Malon was somewhere inside the house, getting ready.

Just the thought of her brought a smile to Link's face. The weather wasn't what they'd hoped for, but nothing could ruin this. For all the sky's clouds, Link saw only the sun beyond and his beautiful bride hiding somewhere in the removed building.

This day had been coming for a long time, but it had taken that long to arrange it all. There were cousins and uncles who had traveled from rather far away to see this. Her uncle Harris had even come. As so many others, the man congratulated them. What set him apart from most of the relatives was the fact that he'd actually met Link before. There was remembrance in his face for that time they'd stayed in his home.

Harris was the exception, as many of the people had no clue about Link and were, in general, very curious. Where had he come from, the city? What did his parents do? What did _he_ do?

Link told them with a smile that he worked on the farm. That was the whole of it, really. There were things he had done a long time ago, but those were past. He had come from the forest, yes, but what did his origin matter? All Link cared about was what the future held for him and Malon.

That answer hardly placated, but they tended to leave him alone after realizing he wasn't interested in saying any more.

A few torches had already been lit around the field, to hold off the growing twilight. It was an old tradition to be wed by sunset. From his place near the edge of everything, Link could see the orange sun near to touching the horizon. People were beginning to converge in the center and Link headed over to join them.

There were just a few minutes left until it would all begin. Even as Link approached, somebody leaned out from the crowd and congratulated him. Link thanked the person, who had disappeared immediately after the sentiment, and joined the group himself.

That proved easier attempted than done, as the attendants developed a tendency to part around him. It was such a fascinating thing to have the mysterious groom in their midst! In truth, Link had begun to feel sick of all that attention, but he knew that these were Malon's relatives and every awkward question or inspection would be worth it in the end.

Taking a glance back toward the house, Link found himself thinking how any hell would be worth Malon's hand, and that he could brave anything for her.

There was some movement around the house, and Link could see people heading out of it. Surely Malon was among those, but Link began his forward march once more before being sure. Bad luck and such.

It didn't take long for Link to reach his place at the front. The crowd thinned with each yard until it allowed an empty space. The only person there was an old priest from the city. Link remembered him vaguely but, somehow, was unrecognized in turn. This was probably for the best, he thought.

The air's bustle began to slip away and subside. As Link looked out at the milling bodies, he saw that many toward the rear were disappearing downward. There were benches scattered around the field. As more people sat, Link was made able to notice the parted place filled with a shock of white and red.

It took only moments for the crowd to grow short and for Malon to reach the front, but it seemed like centuries to Link. And then, as if time skipped, she was up there next to him. They stood still and stared at each other, smiling and unable to do anything else. The old priest said something, but these words bounced around in Link's head so that he could only understand the final prompt.

"I do."

The air felt like a furnace, or else full of wind as Link waited that half moment for Malon's response. Blood hummed in his ears and slowed to a near-stop. Where there had once been a cloud of the crowd's white noise, everything was empty now, and focused.

The priest spoke and she spoke in turn.

"I do."

With these words the world rushed back into reality. It was all complete again. No, not again. Everything was now suddenly complete as it never had been. They kissed like something momentous. Link was numbed and struck with too much feeling. Gaps began appearing. For a lifetime he kissed Malon, and then there were voices in the air, all unintelligible. They were walking through that crowd, and it was dark. The sun was down, mysteriously disappeared. Link couldn't remember anything, couldn't understand anything except for the dream in his hand.

* * *

Blue pill or red pill? This is where you make a choice. Step back and take it as a pretty oneshot, or read on to find an ugly epic. I leave this to you.

* * *

The house was dark, as all occupants had departed before nightfall. The door had just shut behind them, leaving no light but that from windows. Malon's hand remained in his own, and Link's other began searching out for a candle, a lantern, or something.

A certain stink of the darkness began pressing on Link's mind as he pulled the matches into his hand. There was something inexplicably sick about this obscurity. It had to be lit. It _had_ to be lit.

"Here, I'll get a candle," Malon said, disappearing from his grasp for a moment. The match had just leapt into life and, but did not illuminate much beyond Link's own hand. It was a short shock as Malon slipped off into the dark room beyond his sight, but she returned quickly.

Pressing match to wick, Link held it high and looked around the room. He looked at Malon, and wondered if she felt this. That itching like ants on skin seemed to crawl out of this darkness, but it seemed only to be so for him. She smiled, but was that crooked falsity to it? Could it be that Malon knew the strange feeling here, but pressed the thought away?

Maybe it was only imagination?

Hand in hand, with the candle held to illuminate, they headed together into the next room.

If there had been any way to scream at that sight, Malon would have.

If there had been any breath left in his lungs, Link would have joined her.

There as a smudge in the darkness, crouched some kind of sinister creature. With each movement its ethereal body faded and was reborn like the dancing tongues of some awful flame. Under its body was another smudge, but one that they recognized. Link did first, and pulled Malon back into the other room. That was an aunt, one which Link had only briefly met the day before. It had seemed she didn't like Link much, but…

He wanted to throw up.

"Link," Malon said, voice like her shivering skin, "you sword…"

"That's upstairs," he said, "Hurry."

He gripped her hand tightly and they headed for the stairs. Their steps were slow, but felt hurried. Link's heart raced, pounding in a steady, lightning circuit. He didn't, couldn't, take his mind away from that nightmarish thing below.

Slow steps do not prevent the creaking of old steps which have always done so.

The sound of some reactionary movement below sent them into a rush upward. Link climbed the stairs two at a time three at a time, towing his panicking bride behind. They'd reached the second floor in moments, but something was already at the base of the stairs.

When they entered Link's room, the door was slammed shut and Malon set herself against it. Link dove to the floor and frantically stuffed his hand under the bed. His old equipment was here, long hidden away. Link's hand grasped about and found the familiar hilt.

With one, desperate swipe, the old white sword leapt into his grasp and out from under the bed. Link flew to his feet with it and turned back to the door. Malon was shoving herself against it, trying to hold the wood back against that darkness's advances.

Aside from the contact on wood, its only noise was a low, constant voice of whispering.

"Get back Malon," Link said, holding his sword toward the bulging door, "Let it in."

She stared at him for a moment then obeyed. The door flew open as she stepped aside and, Link noticed with fury, it even clipped her on the arm and knocked her to the wall. That darkness burst in through the opening but Link was there and ready. He struck out with the white sword as it leapt for him, already watching for whatever it might do.

To Link's icy surprise, the blade slipped through it like nothing and the darkness kept on toward him. It was Link's reflexes that saved him, as he was able to drop aside from its darkly vaporous body.

"Get out!" Link said, throwing one arm toward Malon. She was still, seeming not to comprehend.

Momentum carried the darkness over the bed and Link could hear it scrambling over there.

In one frantic movement, Link grabbed Malon by the arm and was pulling her out the door. As they went, Malon managed to get ahold of the door and slam it shut behind them. Even as she did this, the darkness began to pound on the far side. The two of them stumbled back away from the door and watched for a long, slow moment.

The heavy door shuddered beneath each blow. A thin stream of smoke began to float off its aged surface. Link wasn't sure that he'd seen it, but that had been enough time wasted. Wordlessly he led Malon away and down the stairs. That pounding noise seemed to grow with each step until they were running back out the front door.

People were all about. They'd been in the house for less than a minute before the terror began.

"Back so soon?" Talon said and, noticing the sword in Link's hand, "What happened?"

"You need to get everyone out of here," Link said, glancing back toward the house, "There's something in there."

"What's in there?"

"I…" Link tried to think but there was nothing, "I don't know. It's dangerous, and you need to make people leave."

"But where…"

Before another word could be spoken, the snapping sound of glass fell from above. Link turned in time to see the black smudge sailing through the air. He was not able to move quickly enough to keep it off Ingo.

The darkness collided with the man's chest and squirmed there for a moment. Ingo screamed and fell backward. This impact jostled the thing slightly and gave Link enough time to take hold and throw it away. He reached into the sickly mass with both hands and grasped whatever substance he could find.

Pain erupted throughout Link as his flesh began to burn. It was all he could do to toss the darkness aside and not to drop it back onto Ingo. Link stepped back with short breath and stared down at his raw hands. A glance at Ingo showed that he was even worse off, covered in the same dark burns all across his face and chest.

There was silence. Terrible, fearful silence before the screaming began. The glad crowd from before became one of agonized terror. They stumbled over each other in flight from the darkness. The whole mass moved so quickly that they dropped the things they'd been transporting, chiefly food, drinks, and benches.

A discarded torch fell near Link and he snatched it up. He had left his sword on the floor in his dive, and did not go after it now. It could not help with this beast.

Link held the torch of and jabbed it toward the darkness, trying to drive its hovering presence away. The thing was like a slug now, crawling across the ground. Link could not let himself be fooled, though. He needed only to think of Ingo or remember the scrawled pain across his hands.

In a flash of movement, the darkness leapt up and through the nearby window. It was inside the house once more, but at least away from everyone. He could not leave it there, in their home.

Link held tight to the torch as he climbed through after it. The window's ragged edges pulled at his clothes, but Link forced himself on. The room was dark as before, and ominous. Red fingers of fire lay submerged in the wood. They ran all across the walls and reached upstairs in strength. For a moment he stared down at his hands and thought of Ingo's awful burns.

Somehow, Link knew just where the darkness had gone. He followed that taut, invisible string and found it huddled in the same room as before. Malon's aunt was gone, but the darkness remained there in its awful threat.

He growled and thrust the torch forward, hoping to scorch the whole of it away. However, the darkness dodged his attack and slithered a few feet away. Link was on it again, though, and pushed it back toward a corner. Here he attacked in ferocity but was met by an aggressive lunge. Link flinched back from the charge but was struck by that horrid, acidic body.

Link stumbled backward and fell, his body scrambling with sick, burning pain. The darkness moved away into some unknown location as the fire crawled across Link's skin. It seemed that his bones were crumbling, but Link tried to climb up.

He fell across the hot wood floor and tumbled. Link opened his scalded eyes to see dancing flames all about. They jabbed at his eyes and his skin and climbed down inside his body. Link heard something gurgle out of himself and he clambered across the floor.

Each movement was hell but he somehow left that room. He could see something ahead, something dark and shifting. Was that the… no it was the window. Link did all he could to reach that place. They were out there, but where was… He fell across the window and spilled outside.

* * *

Nearly an hour later, the four of them stood on a nearby hill, staring at the wrecked farmhouse. The fire had grown and, for all the damage done by the darkness, nobody could put it out. Ingo was unconscious, Link was unconscious, and everyone else had fled. The whole structure was not gone. The fire had lost strength after some time of hungry spreading.

Maybe there was something left in there? With night all about and the darkness roaming, they could not stay to find out.

Link stood holding Malon, doing all he could to ignore the screaming pain across his body. Those burns were deep, and widespread. Talon was holding an unconscious Ingo. The man had worse burns than Link, and had not awoken since the attack.

Malon shook in his arms as they all stared. The whole scene seemed surreal as it glowed from deep, residual embers. In the night that was the only strong landmark. They were going to go to Kakariko for the night, but could not quite bring themselves to leave.

Malon was crying and, Link noticed, Talon had silently joined her. This was home that had become ruin. Link wanted to join them in tears, but he could not. All Link could think of was the dark creature which could not be touched by his sword, and which was still around.

Link could not mourn for the fear which coursed through him.

* * *

_Link lay sprawled across the cave floor. Flickering light from the torch played shadows all over its looming walls. Strange, but the air here seemed to be frozen as it touched Link's body. It stung in his wounds just as the dripping sweat did._

_It was out there: that nameless thing, that darkness. Nameless, but it must have been ageless. Nameless, but it knew Link's name. Surely it had known that forever. Ever since the birth of darkness, Link's name had gone slicking through its foul mind. Surely it had known his name, because that shadow had been tracking him from the day he was born. And Link didn't know if he could run any longer._


	2. Fear in the Form of Words

_Give me the dust of my fathers._

_That heavenly ash and ancient debris of vacated memories. Hand over the shattered fragments of what was, and what led to this. There were fingerprints of old stained across the whole of things to lend a dark and bleeding hue._

_It all came down. Now Link felt those eternally tremorous inchings. The stuck stone beneath began to shake. It had taken to this as he himself convulsed, and that stole away feeling of it. This breaking apart of bindings was nothing new, and such a fact struck deepest chords of fear._

* * *

With scorched and tainted clothes from half-forgotten jubilance wrapped about himself, Link sat on the edge of a rented bed. This was a narrow construction, currently allowing space for just his perched body and that prostrate one of the grievously wounded Ingo. The man had not moved about the bed since being dumped there an hour ago. Instead, shallow breaths and half-made mutters reached out in droves and prattling moments.

Talon had taken occupancy of a tottering wooden chair so that he could absentmindedly sway while staring at the frail forms of his loved ones. Malon lay in the other bed, face hidden away in the corner between cushion and wall. Every so often a prevailing sob floated out from her hidden lips, but Link could not think of those. He could not think of Talon's face, wrought with the same grief, though hiding it behind hard red eyes and a porous mustache.

For all the night that separated them, Link's mind stuck to the darkness like some horrid fascination. That was not it, though, nor was it any interested or willing attraction. Link wished to think of his wife. He wished to think of her as his wife, and to imagine their home was not destroyed.

A thick multitude of pleasant possibilities pressed through Link's mind, but that creeping figure drove them all out through dogged insistence and the curious depravity of it own reality. The darkness existed somewhere out there, hiding in its element and sitting patiently for Link's return. It had come for him alone. Link knew that. He did not know why, or how he could be so sure, but Link held that central fact to be painfully certain.

That assault was no fluke, no wandering devastation. It had come for Link and lain in wait. The foul hunt had been struck down but momentarily. The darkness would heal as Link did, and that would become a central factor in their eventual meeting. Whose wounds would dissipate first? Who would die?

Or did Link even heal?

Link looked down at the mess of sudden scars which lay across all the skin of his hands and forearms. They were thin in some places, and horrifically glaring trails of broken flesh in some others. These burns seemed like sickness from the terrible hue in their membranous bodies.

First one scalded fist fell shut, then the other, in growling agony and determination. Link stared at the ravaged surface of his hands. There was something terrible about that darkness, something deeply and utterly wrong in such an obscure, omnipresent fashion. That was a nightmare wandering its own element, taunting and hunting the hero.

Just as Link began down that depreciating road, his questions were stolen away. A sharp, slow rapping cut through everything internal. He found himself staring up toward that alien noise, and then looking across at Talon. The man had gone a step further and risen from his chair, moving a menacing, yet simultaneously panicked, inch toward the door. His fists were clenched to the point of shaking whiteness.

With forced, deliberate movements, Talon took two further steps and touched his hand to the knob. Before approaching any further action, he twisted his head around toward Link. Fingers touched to the hilt of his sword, Link nodded back.

Could the sword even do anything?

Talon twisted the knob with a fateful click and let the door hang open a few inches. Link saw in periphery, the lovely blur that was Malon. She lay nearly behind him, sweetly still on the bed. Evidently, she had drifted off between waves of grief and fear.

Maybe the sword would be useless as before, but Link knew he would do anything to keep back an intruder. He would throw himself into the crevice of darkness for any moments that might buy.

A muffled noise floated into the room, eventually becoming the sound of words with lost meaning. Only a single gauge existed and that was the inexpressive back of Talon's head. Something was being said, and Talon was whispering something back. None of this could be understood, leaving Link to the faint readiness of panic and an itching hand.

Talon turned and finally said in his half-choked voice, "He wants to talk… with you."

Apprehensions abounded as Link rose, never letting loose the already bared blade. The heavy door stayed nearly shut as he approached, but Link heard something of a voice through there.

"Are you… Link"

Link's grip tightened on the hilt and he looked over toward Talon. The man stared at him, then at the door, then back at him. Though hardly moving, Link could see that Talon was fearful of this situation and of whatever lay out there. And rightfully so. It sounded human to Link, but what horrors could bypass that scale?

A quick response won out, slipping into, "I'm going out to the hall. Make sure the door is locked behind me, just in case."

"But…"

Link shook his head. "If that is the… the creature… It will be best if the door is closed… and locked too. Just do it." With that said, he slipped through the cracked door and out into a sparsely lit hall. Shadows stretched across the floor, lying beyond the feeble reach of the few hanging lamps. The door clicked shut behind Link and, to his grim satisfaction, sounded with the snap of a deadbolt lock.

If the thing out here was the darkness, that lock wouldn't keep it back any more than Link's sword, but this was all about appearances. At a point like this, that was all that mattered. If he couldn't actually make them safer, Link would make them feel safer, even if that was just in miniscule amounts. It was all he could do, so, by every strength he had, Link would.

Standing in the hall was a small, terror stricken man. He had on a set of white robes, but those hung around his body like frail drapes. As white as those robes, his face seemed nearly too nervous to speak. However, his stammering speech came out finally.

"You need to… need to go to… to Castle Town."

"Who are…" Link said, but trailed off. He knew this man. Not well, but well enough to recognize him. This was the priest from the ceremony, and the same who appeared momentarily in Link's last escapade many months ago. He looked rung out, but there was an obvious reason for this. "Why?"

"The… the princess…" the priest took in a deep, thin breath before forcing out the whole sentence, "The princess needs to see you, she has something to say about… about what happened."

"What do mean she knows about that?" Link said. He meant it as a question but his voice carried out a growl. The priest shrank back an inch and began to stammer. Link took a breath and said, "About what happened today? With the…"

Link didn't have to finish, the man was already nodding dumbly.

"Where should I meet her?" Link asked, "The castle?"

"No," the priest said, nearly whispering, "She asked to meet you in the Temple, and she gave me money to take a room at an inn."

"The Temple…" Link said to himself, forgetting the panicked priest for a moment. The man wandered away a couple steps before Link saw and questioned him.

"Where are you going?"

"I… umm… _this_ inn." He said, and opened a nearby door. With the priest disappeared, their business was clearly concluded. Now alone in the hall, Link stayed silent and still, staring at the vague shadows. What could Zelda possibly have to say about this? Why had she sent the priest away? Link started to open the door, but was stopped short by the catch of the deadbolt. He knocked and Talon pulled the door open before the first rap faded.

"What did he say?"

"He had a message for me, from the princess."

"The princess? What was the message?"

"I think she knows something about this," Link said, "About what is happening."

"What does she know? How?"

"I don't know," Link said. He started to drop himself onto the foot of the bed but, remembering Ingo's unconscious occupancy, found himself merely leaning uncomfortably against a bedpost. "He said she needs to talk with me. In the city."

"You can't leave," Talon said, "Not now. Not with what just happened and Malon and Ingo… like this. What if that thing came here? _I _can't fight it."

"_I can't fight it either_," Link said, leaping up and nearer to Talon. His voice was low and wild. "Talon, I wasn't driving it back before, I was bait. It's stronger than me and there's nothing I can do to it. The truth is, if that thing came here tonight, I would be as useless as Ingo is now. I need to go. I don't want to, I don't want to put you all in danger, but I'm not keeping you safe by staying here."

With each word, Talon's gaze grew hard and flat. The awful gravity of this secret was something he'd not been expecting.

"Maybe the princess knows how to kill it, I don't know. All I know is that this isn't going to stop unless I can absolutely kill it, and I can't now. I can't do anything to it. That's why I need to go. You'll be safe though, you three. That darkness… it's after me. Just me. I know that too, but… If I go away from here, it will leave all of you alone."

"Go, then," Talon said, "but don't think of running to keep us safe. You better come back."

"I will, I'll be back soon. Here, take my sword," Link said, hands already moving onto the clasp. Talon began to protest, but Link spoke over him, "If I'm wrong about it, protect Malon."

Talon froze and grimaced, but took the sheath and blade in his hands. They seemed alien in that man's possession, somehow ungainly and unnatural. Talon nodded slowly and looked over at the sleeping two.

Link slipped through the door, but did not leave until the deadbolt sounded. With that, he left the inn and headed out into the town. Kakariko was quiet and mostly empty at this hour. Few people wandered about, and those were hurrying off into buildings or toward more distant residences.

Even as the last of them disappeared, Link found himself disappearing out from the town. Steps led down into the darkness of Hyrule field, and Link moved quickly through that desolate expanse. Ghosts haunted the field, though they came in several shapes. Some floated as flickering embers on the breeze, while one great disturbance loomed high on the hill. Or, rather, it was highlighted by that terrible nonexistence.

His eyes strove at every moment to stay from the Ranch's hulking corpse. Link crossed the river and clambered on into Castle Town with only that first accidental glance to remember. Instead, Link focused his attentions on trivial matters such as the still-scorched drawbridge. So many reconstructions had occurred since the days of Ganondorf's reign, but that one seemed to always remain as his final marker.

Link ran through the cobblestoned streets of Castle Town, tracing a trail he'd run many times before. The Temple of Time lay off to the side, slightly removed from the rest. Link headed that way, and was soon walking up the old stone steps.

As always, the Temple's grand hall was lit totally. Torches adorned the white walls, while several grand chandeliers hung from above. Light floated and rebounded across the thousand clean surfaces. Zelda stood in the center, seeming to belong here by her stark and elegant dress. It surprised Link to see a small boy idling around her, hands shoved in his pockets and eyes staring all around at the majestic architecture.

Link's footsteps echoed around the room with a soft, solemn clap for each step. He looked at the Princess levelly as she watched him approach.

Ignoring formalities, Link said, "What do you know about this?"

"The priest was right, then," she said, "I'm truly sorry for what you've lost."

"What do you know about this?" Link said again, ignoring her condolences. They meant nothing so long as that darkness remained.

"I understand your impatience. This was information kept by the Sheikah, chief among their oldest prophecies. That is why I found it necessary to send the priest away. I only know by unfortunate circumstances. As Impa was the last of the Sheikah line and had no kin of her own, she passed it along to me before everything fell apart. There are other histories she passed, but…"

"Just tell me," Link said, snapping. In the corner of his eye, he saw the little boy stare up at him. What use were abstract histories for the monster outside?

Zelda looked at him as well, silent for a long moment. "I'm sorry. This must be hard for you. That creature you encountered is the fractured consciousness of an ancient evil. There was a greater darkness which nearly succeeded in reaching our world, but was stopped on the brink. That was not the end, though. Something occurred there which imprinted the struggle into the very face of time."

"What do you mean, imprinted?"

She sighed, releasing a deeply pent sadness, "Destined to repeat. The evil was never destroyed, not fully. It was only injured. It was never able to be removed again, and is constantly in a state of entering our world. That creature you encountered was its first step through.

"Does that mean that the rest of it will be following?"

"No," Zelda said, "Because that is not the only part of the prophecy. Undeterred, the darkness could come through into our world as it attempted so long ago. The only thing stopping it is the hero who injured it originally. In doing so, he was imprinted as well."

Link kept silent, listening with slowly clenching fists.

"He injured the darkness, and so kept it out of our world. This could never be permanent, though, and the darkness always came back. All that kept the world safe was him who always returned with it. Just as occurred in ancient times, that hero fought back the darkness at great cost to himself. This…"

"What cost?" Link said.

"He… died." Zelda said, "Whenever the darkness returns, it finds the hero of that time and they fight. Neither survive, and the world is kept safe once again.

"And you think that's me," Link said, his voice becoming guttural, "You think I'm going to fight it and die?"

"Link, I'm…'

"No, don't say you're sorry!" Link said, "You've known about this. You could have warned me."

"It wouldn't have made any difference. It never has before."

"But it _could_ have. I could have prepared. I could have been ready for it!"

Zelda shook her head.

"There is nothing you could have prepared for. I see the scars on your hands. Those are from the creature, I presume."

"Yes," he said, lifting them up, "They are."

"Then you may understand. There is only one way to kill it, and no amount of preparation could…"

"No," Link said, "there has to be some way."

Link's mind raced and reeled, searching for anything that could help him. Ideas flitted past but they were all tragically useless. Zelda said something, but that slipped away in Link's frantic thought. Something appeared, was pressed away. No, that was ridiculous. Not now. Link shook his head, and saw the image of that strange child whip around and away.

Maybe it was time. If this was true, if Zelda was right, then there would be no other time. There could be no other chance. Link took a step back from Zelda, and saw that strange, condescending compassion etched across her face. As if he was just a scared child. No. This was going to be stopped.

"Where are you going?" She said, words finally reaching ears as Link turned to run. It was still night, so maybe he would have time to make it there by sunrise. Would that be enough time? Would she still be there? For him?

Thoughts raced, and Link raced to keep up with them. He ran straight out the door and into the night. It had been so many years, could he still…?

If there were any chance, any chance at all, it would be with her.

Link ran for all his might and fear.

* * *

_Stand on the face of the ancients_

_The ancients: the shadow and Link. They'd been running round this circle for so long that the beginning wasn't even real anymore. All they had was this track. That overshadowed everything. Link didn't know if anything was real outside of that conflict. The air felt hot in his lungs, but all Link knew was the he felt cold._


	3. The Fading Breath of Things Past

_Bare the secret flesh of time itself_

_Link had done everything he was supposed to. He had left behind his childhood to protect a future he didn't know. He had fought to save a world that wasn't his, all for the one light in it all. He had done this and set it free in the process. The only way he could have avoided this was to let Hyrule burn, to decay and fall apart. The goddesses knew he wouldn't do that , couldn't, and so he was locked into the cycle. The cruel irony was that only in ending could the cycle progress._

* * *

Link sweated in the chilled night air. That unseen sheen was from running, from sprinting all the way here. It was from stress, and fear, and was forced out by a heart that had already been pounding before the trek even began.

The sweat was from the smoldering wreckage Link stood over.

It wrenched his stomach and heart to observe the destroyed farmhouse. Nothing was visible save a few orange veins, but those put off such great heat as to burn Link's tired eyes. He hadn't come back here to look at this, but now that he did, Link could not draw himself away. There it was, all of the future curled in smoldering ashes. This was the symbol he'd always come back to, smashed up.

A slight shifting noise from behind took Link's attention that way. Epona was there, standing freely just a few feet off. Her red body was half obscured, half aflame in reflection of the mountain of embers. Big, dark eyes stared at Link.

He left the ruins behind and took hold of the horse. She was bare, unsaddled and free of any equipment. Luckily, Link had grown adept in riding during his time here. In moments he'd taken a seat on the horse's back, and a few more sent them off away from the smoldering ranch.

Time

Time was the strange adversary now. The darkness was out there, but that was a definite. Of course it was there. What struggled about in Links mind were questions of right, and whether Malon was safe.

That last question always existed in his thoughts. Always. That occurred first in the morning, even on lazy summer mornings. Especially now that true danger stalked. Maybe Malon was hurt, maybe she was d… Maybe she was okay. That last possibility was hammered into Link's mind over and over again. Maybe it was true. Maybe it was true.

Not able to trust the forced possibility, Link drove Epona to run faster. He'd generally settled for walking before, but not now. Not when seconds mattered like swords. Not when the nick of time was an edge that could slit wrists.

The darkened field slipped past as Epona galloped. Link saw it in the silhouettes that disappeared behind, and the shrinking of those few lit patches. The moon hung high in the sky, but its light seemed shallow or else thin. Any illumination was just taken up greedily by the stretched shadows. The whole night was like a sea of poison, but Link needed to find his way through. There was no other chance. The fact of that had driven itself strongly through his mind until there could be no other certainty.

Beneath membranous moonlight, Link reversed a surreal journey. The adult world slipped away, or it should have, as he neared the kokiri forest. How many times had he come back this way since leaving? Twice? No, just once. The other had been through a different entrance, but there had still been similar results. The forest he'd once called home made into a desperate maze. His assurance gone, Link had wandered and nearly been lost.

Now he needed assurance. Now Link leapt from Epona's back and ran into the woods, leaving behind the strange world of man for the strange world of children.

It was dark within the woods, darker than the field. No moonlight reached down past the reaching branches, and Link had to walk with his arms stretched out ahead. Sometimes he found himself yearning for his sword, but that always resulted in the same distraught memory, and a further sense of worried quickness.

How could he have even come here? The chance suddenly seemed impossible, but what else? When Link was a child, he'd belonged here. No, he'd never belonged here, but he was at least comfortable in this place. Now it stretched out in uncertain menace, taunting the kokiri who had grown.

Would the woods speak with him tonight? Or would they loath him as the woods loathed every adult? Link knew he could never return to his childhood, had always known that, but could this place accept him back for even a moment?

In truth, there was only one way to know. Link stumbled out into a slight, moonlit clearing. The trees stood away in this space, allowing a patch of thick moss to grow across the soil. As Link's foot touched this, a scent wafted out that brought back every moment of his childhood. That only strengthened his resolve, though. He'd left the kokiri woods and found Malon, and been happier with her than ever before. He only returned tonight to keep her safe.

Link looked around from his uncertain place in the clearing. Words stuck in his throat, making him nearly as afraid of this as of that darkness. What if there was no response?

Finally, Link pulled together his remaining strength and said, "Mother, I need you."

His words floated out through the woods and were lost in its dark expanse. That silence seemed to reflect what a fool he had been.

"Please, I don't have any other options. I know that I'm not a kokiri anymore, but you said you would always help us…'

"My child, that promise meant I would keep the worst weeds from your gardens."

Link turned toward the old voice that was so intertwined with his young memories. There she was, just stepping out from the woods. She seemed to be so combined with all the flora that the draping bounds of her dress could have been extensions of the moss. She had green hair like Saria, and that thought sent a further jolt of isolation through Link. He did not belong here. This was his realm no longer.

"I know," Link said, "I shouldn't have come here, but there was nothing else."

Her ancient eyes floated on Link, piercing and soft at once.

"I understand. What ails you, child?"

Link took a breath so that he could relay the nightmarish story, but found the events stuck in his throat. Did he really want to bring the darkness here, even in name? If there was ever a place of innocence, this was it.

As he looked into her eyes, Link knew that, despite all her maternal generosity and kindness, the forest's mother was old enough to no longer require innocent speech. The fact that she cared for children did not make her one. This realization finally brought Link to speech.

"I am being chased, hunted, by a darkness. It destroyed my home and it is still coming. I know it is. I've spoken with Zelda, the princess of…"

"Yes," she said.

"I… I've spoken with," for half a moment, Link was a child tripping over his syllables, but then the awful memories slipped back and his stammer disappeared. "She said that this is something that's happened before. The monster, the darkness comes and then the hero, she said that was me, fights it and dies. She said it all comes from something that happened a very long time ago."

"What do you need?"

"I need the truth," Link said, "Or the full story. Please, I need to know what is happening. You've been around forever. If anyone knows, it's you."

"I do know of what you speak," she said, "and she told you the truth. My child, there is no other way. If you fail to defeat the darkness as you must, all of the world will be cast toward a fate that none else may avert."

"Duty…"

"Yes, this is yours."

"You can't stop it?" Link said, almost pleading.

"Child, I could help you run. I could send you away from here so that the evil might never find you, but who would be evil then? You may either face your fate, or leave the world to burn."

Link stared at her. He wanted to say something, but no noise would come.

"I've watched you grow, even when you were not near these woods, and I know what kind of man you are, my child. If there could be any other truth, I would make it so, but if you do not face that evil, it will take the world. I know who you are, Link, and I know that you cannot allow this."

It seemed that Link had stopped breathing in the presence of her eyes and words.

"You did not come here for a way out because, deep down, you knew there was none. You came for certainty, and I give you that now. Truly, there is no other way."

She turned away into the woods and had gone by her second step, leaving Link in the clearing, numb and staring.


	4. The Rebirth of Ancients

_Follow me_

_Like a lamb to slaughter. Link had been taken straight to the end, and nothing could stop him. Nothing could save him. Of course, that was because he couldn't even save himself. The shadow was out there, somewhere. It had probably found the mouth of the cave by now. It was coming for him. The shadow could feel him: where he had been and where he was. The most perfect tracking: to be tied like string. Forever like a length of damned string. The tie went both ways as Link felt the darkness there at the edge of his mind. It squirmed like an itch in his head, always desperate in its advance. The darkness was coming. The darkness was always coming._

* * *

Link ran through the night, hardly breathing beneath the hard effort. His feet stabbed holes in the ground and shoved him on ahead. The night fell backward with his advance, but also stretched ahead. It was leading him along, but Link needed to go. He needed to run to reach Kakariko by morning. What would Malon think if she woke up and he was gone? Few things could be helped now, but it was possible for Link to keep back that moment of worry and confusion.

Little things were all he could accomplish. He could keep Malon from waking up afraid, but he could never wake up beside her. Link would be there for her this morning, but he would never grow old with her. They would never see another full moon together, or any stars. She always loved stars. Every one of these thoughts was like dragging his guts across gravel, but they would not stop. Link was powerless against the tide of things that would never happen.

He ran to beat the sun, and to give Malon one of the last happinesses he could. He also ran to fight down the sobs that wanted to spring out for every terrible realization. The typhoon of ragged breaths came near to deafening him, but could never fully drown out what he'd lost.

The sun was still hidden behind some low cloud or hilltop, but a grey light poured over everything despite. If Link looked, he would have been able to see the ruins of the ranch. With squinted eyes the nearly finished castle would surely be apparent. However, he didn't look for any of those. Al l that mattered was the long staircase and what lay above it. Link needed to reach that place before the sun rose completely, before Malon awoke.

Footsteps on the stone bridge boomed like the beating of some ominous drum in the silent morning air. Link hated to hear that, and to disturb all the stillness that still existed from the night before. He hated to touch the grass, and to hear his toes tap on each successive step, knowing that any of these might have been his last. The last sunrise, but that was thrown away for Malon. Link pumped his feet so as to run up the stairs. For the blood in his ears, Link could not hear his toes tapping. All he knew was the nearing end: the dangling sign which proclaimed "Kakariko Village".

As had been true when he left, the town was silent and empty. Despite the new sun rays, all of the townsfolk were hidden away in homes. Nobody existed save Link, and no building was truly real except for the inn. Link pulled the door open and rushed in. The air was slightly warmer inside, but Link could only think of this for half a moment. Only Malon mattered, and how quickly he could reach her. The staircase took him into the hallway that would take him to her.

Link approached the door and stared at it, somehow suddenly finding the time to inspect this. The door had been constructed from hard, old wood which now bore a thousand marks of age and wear. Link touched a finger to the surface and ran it across. A tale of textures ran beneath that finger, betraying the wood's great age. Yet it was still there, still alive. Link was young, but not for long.

Soon he would be dead.

There was no other possibility. Whatever he did, Link's story would end in the same tragic fashion. Mother had told him, just as Zelda had. Link's gut knew it too, since before Zelda's first word on the matter. The darkness was going to kill him. They would be safe, though. Malon would be safe because of his death, because Link would not die alone.

Thoroughly shaken, Link pulled his hand back from the cool wood and rapped once. He'd intended to knock again but, after his first firm touch, the door swung open. Dim light floated from the window. It was obscured by a heavy curtain, but still provided more than enough to reveal the scene.

Talon lay on the ground, shoved against and nearly under the bed. A burn to match Ingo's and Link's own marred the man's arm in a thin trail. Ingo lay in his bed, turned up against the wall as if simply shoved there. The whole room was in a state of disastrous dishevelment, with woods and fabrics all ruined and thrown about. Link's sword protruded from the wall just above Ingo, as if driven in by some monstrous force. It sagged at an angle, and swayed slightly with the remnants of old reverberations.

More than anything else, Link noticed Malon's absence. He looked at the bed where she'd been, but found nothing. Link dug through the blankets and pulled Talon's unconscious body aside to check beneath. She was not here, not anywhere. With every passing moment, Link's breaths grew more choked and painful. Those threatening tears began to pour in burning streams. Clipped words came out, trying to define Link's stabbing disbelief. He murmured, growled, and sobbed things like no, and please, and don't.

Most of all, he said Malon's name, as if the mere mention could send her back to him.

Even as Link flew about on tragic, tortuous wings, an old sight began to infect the views around him. Wood faded into nothing and that thin hint of sunlight grew to an awful glare. The air turned stale and sour, and it was this venom that finally pulled his attention. The transformation was nearly complete before Link saw what had been done.

Link stared around at the burning world, taking in every ancient terror it held. From the first moment of observation, Link knew he'd seen this before. He had been here so many times. This was the dead place, and the vision of his despair absolute. This sign had threatened him before, and had nearly taken him away. Link had seen the chasm here. He had known the sandman and that nameless, faceless figure of all the world's agony. He had seen those terrible eyes and felt that gaze like ice in his soul.

Now, as he stared through the torn away walls, Link knew they were one.

The outside world was burned away, all scorched earth and blackened plants from malevolent dreams. Thorns filled that decimated sand, and frail yellow bones. The sun beat down with pulsing waves which brought more pain than warmth. All of this burned Link's eyes, but none so terribly as the monolith.

There stood the hatred of everything, menace incarnate. There stood a grand darkness. And, Link realized with an assurance that always been in some form, there stood _the _darkness. It had followed him from the beginning, and only now was finally caught up. The darkness had been there while Ganondorf lived, and it had followed Link into Rauru's spell world. It watched and waited for so long, always reaching for the prey.

It stood across the burning world, staring from its place in the desert. The darkness did not move, for it needed no motion. That presence was enough. Link saw it there and knew where he would find it. This all-surrounding desert brought Link back to the first sight, to the sandman.

The darkness was waiting for him in the desert, and Malon was there with it. Surely she was, or else she was…

Or else she was dead. There existed no more time for denials.

This all made sense. Terrible, twisted sense. When Link left, the darkness assumed it to be flight. It wanted to kill him, or else make him suffer. He had damned it to this, so long ago, and no resurrection could be complete without vengeance. This was a sickening being, but Link had always known that. The darkness wanted nothing more than to sew agony and chaos.

With burning eyes and a tongue tasting of sand, Link awoke on the floor. His body was splayed out and his mind seemed ready to burst from throbbing, but still he forced himself up. He could not stay on the ground, not now. After a long moment he had climbed to his feet. Wretched arms wrenched his sword out from the wall, and then he was gone.

This had to end. It would go with blood, and fear, and agony, but Link was willing to pay that.

* * *

_Follow me_

_In the end, there were only two. The pain that screamed for him to stop, and the deep drumming voice that senselessly said go on. Drums worked feet into motion, and Link had marched into the mouth of his enemy. No fire could turn him back. No fear could send him away. As he had been so long ago, upon finding himself alone in a loveless world, Link was a machine. He moved with one goal, and nothing remained in the world that could appease the fuel deep inside. Link marched into the desert, toward his own death, rather than that of the world._


	5. Scene of Tortuous Repetition

_I've come so far I'm behind again_

_Link had tried so hard, though. He'd fought every step of the way and grappled each day with fate. He'd been dragged back by what must happen and he'd overcome. Link had found a way through the night and back to her. So many times this had happened, but never again. How could it when there were only two options? Either die or let it all burn… _

_All he'd done was for nothing. That sentiment stabbed through Link and taunted every wound. Before, he'd endured the pain of his broken body for knowing he would return to Malon. He'd pushed through it all, knowing that he must return. But there could be no returning. He'd fought so long for what was always damned away from him, though that had never been so apparent as now._

* * *

The sun beat down like a hammer on Link's back, and reflected at his eyes in burning waves from the coarse sand underfoot. He was nearly blinded by the glare, and the hideous haze that floated across the desert's whole expanse. There was an ache in the air, a stabbing sense of all that lay to lose here.

The air was thick with shimmering bands of heat, but Link stared through those passive mirages and into the obscure distance. It was around here somewhere, it had to be. The darkness could not hide, not from him, not forever. Beneath this burning sun, Link would find it, and Link would tear it apart.

The shining white sword dangled from his hand, tip trailing across a sea of shifting sands. That left a line behind him, a trail back that he would never have the chance to take. Those thoughts flitted through his mind: those stinging, poisonous reverberations. Those were memories, and those were ideas of what the future had once entailed. There had been plans, plans they made together, and others that they had never spoken of but somehow took for granted.

All that was gone, swept away into this desert and into the maw of the enemy that waited here. Could it have won already, for the darkness had already swallowed his hopes and his future. Link was dead, already killed off by unwavering knowledge of what would surely come next. Yes, he still walked and still breathed and still felt. Link knew he felt by those alternating tides of adoration and despair, hatred and that beat in his heart that somehow convinced Link Malon still lived.

Somewhere in this shifting world he would find Malon and make sure she was safe. The certainty of that was stabbed straight through Link, and was all that put any drive in his step. If not for her, Link would still have come, but without anything of a spirit remaining. Link would have wandered here, and crawled into the waiting mouth, but she made him run.

And there it was.

Link stood atop one of the many rolling dunes and stared out at his menace. That distant figure dominated a blank horizon, standing as an indistinct creature of vague and twisted humanity. It held distance now, simply watching from a place removed.

He had returned. Link remembered the first he'd seen of this nightmare: that chase through old desert air. He'd run away then, fled from the unknown shadow. There was no running now, and nowhere to run to. If Link escaped, there would remain his frayed conscience and aching heart to contend with. He'd been told, and so thoroughly knew, that no other chance existed. To stand here in the desert, facing down this shadow, was what Link must do.

Link took a step and then was running. The darkness stood its ground now, merely observing the approach. Scattered sand whipped through the air against Link's flesh and sent random shots of minute pain jetting through him, but none of that existed. None of that could be allowed to exist, not now. Not the stabbing sand, not the surrounding stink of rotten milk, and not the glaring sun above. Link knew only his enemy, and how the distance lessened with moments.

He'd meant to approach calmly, but this madness fell over him like something invasive. Everything was shoved out but a few, choice existences: Link's sword held to the side, and the scrape of its guard. Link knew the darkness as it stood watching, and he knew red hair.

He knew red hair and regret that all that life was gone.

The darkness grew as Link knew it would. It became the monolith, and the chasm in all its motionless destruction. There stood chaos with spasming goals. Link ran forward and screamed. He shouted until his voice was hoarse and still threw syllables out like burning stones. Still it grew, always towering upward without end.

With some strange flicker, the darkness shifted from back- to foreground.

Link could find no reaction but to strike. The object of his total, abject hate was within blade's reach and Link's hand flew forward to kill. Was this flesh or simply negativity manifest? Link never knew the answer, but he knew just how his sword bit into the darkness's body.

That was smoke, the black acrid stuff that poisoned food on the cook fire. Still, Link's blade left a thin streak running through something surreal. It boiled about, the darkness's damned body, and filled in the wound with only moments gone. And that was the extent of his damage. Link was on the verge of growling out his frustrations when a bass roar shook the earth. This should have been some cause for satisfaction, but that noise came simultaneously with the snakes.

Two snakes, tendrils of the darkness, had wound their way up and along his blade. They moved quickly, quicker than anything Link had seen, but still it seemed an eternity passed while they slithered up. His arm was still pulling back from the strike when he had first seen them, and then the darkness let loose its bellow of agony, and then the snakes had crawled up and into his hand.

That sensation was ice in his blood and bile in his throat, and Link recoiled from the looming destruction. His head spun from that infection, but Link knew he could not sit still, could not stop. He turned back toward his enemy, but nearly lost his balance in doing so. The world spun madly around.

However, Link could always recognize the burning mass that filled his vision. Through the stretch of eternity, Link would know the shape of the darkness, and remember those foul eyes.

The sand shifted beneath his toxic feet as Link dove forward, swinging his blade at that most hateful existence. Everything shifted and twisted about as Link's mind bent, but the blade struck true, severing something intangible. The darkness reeled back, or shifted, or flinched, or something. It reacted to the damage, but still Link was further infected.

A single snake this time, something rapidly shifting, shivering in the hot air, ran along the length of his blade and wriggled down inside of him. Link felt it there, squirming around the depths of his body. It sank teeth through his heart and soul and sent its venom straight into those recesses.

Link was on his knees now. He didn't know how long he had held this position, only that he had become suddenly conscious of it. The darkness was there and Link flew to his feet. The space between those occupations was forgotten, and Link merely found himself facing down the nemesis once more. The whole of creation was a fever dream, a pell-mell tantrum of wandering color and sound.

The darkness had won, had it won? This was chaos, so of course it had succeeded. No, Link stood here, staring it down in the desert. So long as he existed, the darkness could have no victory. The blade was heavy in his hand, so terribly heavy, but still Link lifted it up. The darkness was all about, filling crevices and pores in everything.

Link's voice was ragged, as if his lungs were eroded. The words were hardly intelligible, but they tore through the whole of existence. Everything was in those gut-wrenching words. Link stared down the antithesis and knew hatred like he never had before. It swarmed inside the air and evaporated with his sweat. Wounds had appeared all across Link's body, as if the poison had torn its way free in order to spoil the outside world.

With his sword held out in the air like a challenge, Link said, "I'll kill you!"

Each syllable of this seemed to match the darkness's own hatred. They burned through the air, though that was already aflame with the darkness's swirling presence.

"Destroy you… for what you've done!"

A great, booming unvoice came crushing down upon him. This was old, older than everything. It was a voice bigger than things real, like the voice of the ocean or the great groan of a decaying mountain. The darkness loosed a roar of laughter, akin to the roar of a forest fire. It loomed, and filled the discernible world, threatening with every moment to devour.

Link saw it reach down for him. The hand of darkness fell down from the sky, its fingers stretched out toward him. There was nothing but obscurity about that limb, only darkness. The sight drove rage through Link. He saw that as the hand of every injustice that had ever been brought against him. This beast was the summation of everything wrong, and the root cause of each evil.

Link bared his teeth. He ground both hands into mechanically clenching the sword's hilt. Link's roar flew out into something equal with the darkness's laughter. His hate was even to that hate and, so consumed, Link leapt upward against the reaching hand. He threw both hands, trembling incessantly as they did, forward with the sword they clutched defiantly.

Time seemed to fall still as contact was made. The sword struck against the darkness's fingertip as purest light against deepest darkness, and there was flash. Neither light nor dark, neither good nor evil, only nothing. The flash was more than anything that had ever been, and engulfed the whole world of sight. Light, both bright and terrible and neither, poured from the point they met, and swallowed the whole world into its screechingly fast attack.

The world was white. Not a white of goodness, or the shade of totally spent ashes, just white. As if the whole of existence had been taken away to leave just that one forgotten pigment behind. There were not textures, or distances, or bodies in the whiteness. Nobody was there, and no sound. The whole of what was real was not.

And Link found himself cast down upon the bitingly coarse sand. The sword lay somewhere about him, Link knew that. Thought he knew that. He'd seen it somewhere. Link tried to stand but found a cool nothing to have taken over the whole of his body. All Link could do was look up at the slowly gathering darkness ahead. It had once more retreated to the horizon, and seemed to bubble back to its original shape with haunting quickness. That reformation put some strength into Link's frayed body. He knew he could not let this happen. He could not, he could not. Link put one arm out, and felt it drag him across the coarse sand. The air was hot, his sweat was cold.

The darkness was coming.

These were the last thoughts Link had before the whole world subsided to a sea of uncertain obscurity and blackness forever.

* * *

_Follow me_

_Down into the nothing. Through the darkness, through the blackness, and deep into what lay beyond. All the meaning was gone, and all the hope. Only a few certainties remained, and they were all tortuous. The darkness was certain, but that would go. For a short time, Link was certain, but he too would disappear. The world would remain, but surely in a different place. What could follow the loss of all certainties? Past the nothing which lay behind all existence, and into another place which was uncertain. There wasn't really anything, was there? Only the blood of when he fought the darkness, and the blood which came before. Was there anything between? Of course not, because what torture would that be? All Link had was the times he fought, and the times before that he did not know well enough to enjoy. Soon enough they were gone, both were gone, leaving only nothing._


	6. Wandering a Strange World

I wish so hard I'm there again

And she swam in Link's head like the air in his lungs. There was never a moment that Malon escaped from his thoughts, because she was the only thing left to keep him grounded. She was the stone that protected him from slipping off into grim territory and the pained destruction that had always haunted the edge of his world. Malon had lived this role since childhood, since the first moment they met. Link remembered it all so fondly, so clearly. Her memory was the most important thing in the world to him, and the countless happy days they had spent together. Those scenes were the only happiness left for him. Everything else had taken the shade of nightmares but, if Link just closed his eyes, he would be with Malon again.

* * *

Eyes slid open to reveal a strange world. The sky of this place slipped about like the surface of some black sea. In fact, the whole of it was like that, somber and shifting. For an indeterminate amount of time, Link could not find the will to exist there, not yet. He merely floated as a single drop of the dark miasma. The surface shimmered as if reflecting moonlight, or letting the faint visage of stars shine through a thick layer of clouds. Edges were everywhere, and were not edges. A world of intertwining nothings, and codependent dreamscapes. It was a strange world, one which invited unconsciousness. Link, even upon wakening, felt some hidden strings tugging him back to the feigned world of sleep. This dream was too vague to hold attention, and too real to allow comfort.

It twisted at nerves which lay dormant, and finally lifted Link, dazed, to his knees. He was semiconscious, as the set of this world. Link shambled a step, crawled to his feet for another, then dropped to his hands. The beneath did not exist. There were no textures, no warmths, only a faint sense that his hands had come into contact with something which might have existed. Link murmured and his fingers whispered across the stretched unreality. He might have coughed for the air may have been smoke, but there were no tells for either. It all drifted, sank in and out of actuality.

If there were hills in such a plane, Link slid across the crest of one such. He could have descended in a toppling mass, to fall splayed at the foot. Or else there were none and he slipped from existence on one flat into fading consciousness beneath their feet. Link's eyes were not alive, and did not understand their sights. Some colors touched upon the brain, and swam about there among the nameless pull The colors: the red, like feathers in hot air, and green like something hidden, forever hidden in another world. Another color, another drifting shade, a blue, a ghost of the sky, a deep brilliance, though possibly subdued by that depth. There could not have been any color or sight at all. There might have been nothing. For any place to birth nothing, this dream would be the one for that. If anything could not exist, all this would.

And a singeing air stung into Link's soul. A tingle of reverberations. The voice of an unheard song set on against flesh. It murmured into his body and turned fingers into his heart. Was this reality? It could have been dreams or drugs or complications of insanity but no. NO. There was no insanity in this song, in this barren voice. It sank into Link's entirety but would not be understood. Some majesty loomed beyond these physical chords, and could only translate itself through molecules of matter, through the faint and the massive twitchings of this world. There might have been colors above.

Some voice may have sung out through all the eternities, something old and welcome. It could have whispered his name, or called hands to take up his head. The voice and its words drifted into unreality, and faded through Link's partially manufactured mind. All the world was construct now, or else had fallen into place by a child's absent dream. This was all faint like a daydream, and heavy like a nightmare. Was this a model of sleep? Were these goddesses who comforted Link's broken form? An ache of countless ages slipped away beneath those miraculous fingers, and something put a primal sense of consolation into his heart.

And that made the strings into something approaching fabric. Link's thoughts touched upon the intensity of actual linearity. It occurred to him that this was the spiritual realm, it must be. What else could simultaneously exist with its absence? So this was that, the spiritual realm, and these the goddesses. Of course, for their colorings and their ancient voices. But what had brought him to this place and to rest beneath these hands? What else but death could send him over to this place? That must have been it. Surely Link had died. He remembered it, the time between a moment and a millennium when he had lain on hot sand and grown cold. The monolith, though, had drawn itself up. Link remembered watching that, the darkness pulling from a nothing into a mass. It had survived, survived him and so won. Link had failed. There could be nothing else. The evil had, in the end, overcome him.

And with this somber realization, another dawn occurred. One of those voices, so ancient and mysterious, kindled memory. Old memory, ancient, and now young as well. So young for moments, and the night before.

Link opened his eyes and saw Mother standing over him. She was staring down with sad eyes at the broken one there. To either of her sides was another, to fill the spectrum from delirium. And only by looking into her eyes, Link knew his speculation was correct. There was nothing but silence which could exist between them then.

But no, even in this world, ancient and new, Link's voice slipped out as a feeble representation of the aching knowledge inside.

"I'm dead…" he said, "I've failed, haven't I?"

Had there been no deception in all those years she remained a mysterious friend of childhood? Calling herself mother of the forest, but could that not be correct? Maybe, maybe literally, but what? That could be true, though it was still deception. How could he have known, how could anyone know? Maybe they all had, and only Link, the one without true connection, had remained ignorant. Either way, that was what slank through his heart. No strength remained to back up that thought, so Link let it fade. He could not be angry, weak as he was. Room existed only for the ache and the soul-crushing weariness.

"No, child," her eternal voice whispered from depthless wells of compassion. "You have not failed. Neither have you died. This world is not an afterlife but an alternate, a parallel. You have been brought here because your foe retreated from that world. The pair of you were brought in tow of the wounded."

"She's here…"

Something of this confirmation drove strength into Link and he stood. The world hung around and swayed at the edges, but Link was on his feet. Around him, the goddesses stood and watch. Mother… Farore… She nodded.

"Where? Where is she?

A hand went out, and fingers gestured direction. Before the air had fallen still of that interruption, Link was headed out across the swirling realm. A negativity, a word of warning, struck after his fleeing form, but that was for recognition later. On the edge of the void, he would hear those words, but not now. Any notice was buried over with the knowledge of Malon's proximity.

Rabid feet carried him through flat, faded scenery. That all flowed away beneath him, retreating without any evident passage of time. The world slipped away behind and stretched identically ahead. It all ran past for years, disappearing before Link's desperate plight. Time seemed ceased to move in that search. Seconds were hours were lifetimes, and that was all the blink of an eye. Link ran for years and his strength faded in moments. All at once, before any effort had ever been exerted, Link found himself stumbling across plain ground. He tripped and finally collapsed. There was no ability left in that body, no reason left in the mind. He was an animal, and unable to move further.

And there he lay, sprawled out and looking into Malon's closed eyes. The realization came without a certain moment of understanding. There was a time when he was collapsed and panting and staring at an anonymous figure before him, and then he was looking at her. Malon seemed to be asleep. Her eyes were lightly shut, and her mouth hung open a fraction. Despite the swirling nonexistence around, Malon seemed calm.

"I'm sorry," Link said, moving nothing but his lips. He could see nothing but the smooth, sleeping face of Malon, of his wife. She lay just inches away, but Link could not persuade his muscles to close that distance. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" the words came as a desperate murmur, hardly audible but wholly meant. "This is my fault. I love you I'm sorry I…"

Some movement drew his gaze beyond the beauty inches off. Link found himself watching a strange formation in the immeasurable distance. His lips fell still at this sight, and Link could do nothing but observe the gathering darkness. The world began to take on minute and frenetic movements. It all buzzed about in time with the life of that evil. The world began to tremble, to squirm beneath his body. The spiritual realm shook like something sick, and Link saw the eye, the terrible eye of that awful construct.

"I'm going to fix this," Link said. He promised. He drew himself up like a paper doll and ran half-dead fingers across Malon's cool cheek. "I'm going to make it better… I'm going to… I'm going to fix this…"

Link repeated himself, murmuring these words like a mantra. He rose from his death as the darkness rebuilt itself. He stood staggered as the darkness stood. Link stared out at the fully formed god of destruction, of night, of all darkness that ever was.

Link looked at the dark god, and growled.

* * *

All that I wanted were things I had before

What he wouldn't give to be back there with her, just once more. Link would tear down the stones of this cavern until it was dust, just to feel her skin once more, to smell her hair. To see her sleeping and to have just one more kiss. Just once more. That could never happen, though, because the only way to save her was to be without her forever.


	7. Through Universal Weariness

The uncertain world flowed about in waves, sinking and slipping into various shades of unconscious color and shape. The whole of this existence was a sick mirage, but Link could not spare even a moment for that strange truth. He could not turn his head away to see the limitless expanse, or waste precious thoughts to wonder why the spiritual realm seemed tainted like a dark, drifting dream. He could not stoop to touch its surface, because his hands were already occupied with the cold, blue hilt, and because the enemy stood before him. That great, groaning monstrosity had a whole horizon to itself. It loomed like fate but, as he had always done, Link stared that down with his teeth bared.

Malon lay on the ground at his feet, collapsed just behind him. Though he did not look around at that moment, Link could still see her face and feel her skin despite the sweat and tremors which truly coursed across the skin of his hands. Here it was, a showdown if there ever could be one: the adversary before him, and the love of his life behind. How could he back down? How could he ever run from this? No, he could not. That was an impossibility. Maybe Link could take her up over his shoulder and run, but what would that accomplish? What hope was there to outrun that plaguing monolith?

No, he stood here to fight that which must be fought. There could be no running from this. Maybe he could have before. Maybe there was once an option of that, but not now. Escape would be to sacrifice Malon to this destruction, and that would be a whole other suicide to undertake. He could not survive that, even if the body lived on. This was the time. Though Link's whole body shook, just as the world shook beneath that grand terror's approaching march, he held his ground. Link clung to his sword and watched the dark god approach.

And then it was upon him. As before, as always, it moved from the distance to the present area with what seemed only a step. There were only vague suggestions of movement, and then it stood over Link. Hadn't it done that in the desert, and before as well? It had watched from a hill, years ago, and Link had passively observed its watching, only half believing in those distant eyes. He had turned away then but, before he knew it, the darkness appeared at his doorstep. From the distance to the present, just as the consciousness did fade.

But now there was no time for contemplation, only for the battle. Link pushed himself and his blade forward into the darkness's space. The towering hatred hardly seemed to react to this assault, but did recoil from the damage Link planted. There was fierce delight in seeing a solid wound set into the flesh of his aggressor. There was no smoke, not here. In this place, the darkness had flesh, and Link was spurred to fight by this realization. The darkness took a step back at the same moment, but it mattered not. Link swung and caught its high ankle in the center.

The flesh there bent and faded beneath his white blade. Link grinned a terrible grin as he watched it burn away. In drops and splotches the darkness floated off into empty space, as if it were bleeding underwater and drifting off in pieces. All that mattered to Link now was that injury, and whatever he could do to tear the darkness apart. Through Link's mind flew every ounce of pain that had been brought on by this demon, and he drove the blade in once more. The darkness roared: a massive and guttural thing which sank through Link's bones.

That was pain in his enemy, and Link held such thin victory close, but something else terrible came of it. Link could not understand where the blow came from, only that in one instant a crushing ache rushed through his whole body. Like lightning it flashed in his eyes and stabbed into his heart, and Link was on the ground then. The world was empty, momentarily, and then filled with an endless, glaring presence. The darkness was over him, inside and beneath and around him. Link searched but could not see his sword, could not see Malon either.

Link's heart squirmed in the pressing night, and a faraway hand of his closed around something hard. The glare stood over a wide, cut-out sneer. A face of fire leaned out from the all-inclusive shadow. It was about to swallow, Link knew that, but not just him. Those awful lips stretched far enough to take in the whole world. Teeth lay within, carved from mental disease and children's fears. They hung and protruded, sharp and sinister so that Link could hardly bear to look at them. This was the mouth that included all the world right on its tongue. He watched the whole thing open wide and prepare to fall, but he could wait no longer.

That thing in his hand must be the sword, it must be. It could be nothing else, and Link brought it up in a high, wavering arch. When had his body become so weak as to struggle with the lifting of his own sword? No, that was not the right question. Link could only wonder when his body had not been weak, when he had not battled against exhaustion and terror. When had there not been weights upon his chest and shoulders, to break and bow? The darkness's lips curled in mock and demanded an answer which threatened to elude him.

Through the all-encompassing darkness, she appeared and gave a shape to goodness. In the mouth of evil, Malon was the only evidence of happiness that Link could imagine. She burned like a torch in the night and soothed like rainwater over a parched tongue. She existed forefront in his mind, and gave Link the strength to finally throw his sword forward. Fingers ran tied around the hilt and his arm struggled in finding strength, any strength at all. But finally, he was pressed on by that memory and the awful knowledge of her proximity. Throwing everything forward in a single, violent lunge, Link managed to drive the darkness away.

And just like that there was no more. Link picked himself up to find a world less dark. Malon lay a few feet off, still unaware of all that had transpired. Link walked over to her and fell down beside, driven both by weariness and a suddenly unbearable urge to be nearer. Link cupped her face in his hand but could manage nothing greater than a whisper. His voice was hoarse, worn as the surrounding muscles.

Something at the edge of Link's vision told him of the world's slow evolution. He finally looked away from Malon to discover those thousand fading shadows. All that darkness had gone to allow a wide, grey light. It burned from somewhere unknown, and from everywhere, but did not burn without end. From that fathomless glow, Link saw the beginnings of shape and color. There was a world beyond the skin of this, and that became readily apparent with each passing second. The spiritual realm was changing, fading out from all around.

Sunlight began to appear through the otherworldly luminance, and Link knew they were returning. As the spiritual realm faded, Link slid his sword back into its place. Through universal weariness, Link was somehow able to lift Malon across his arms. She dangled in his grip like a sack of flour, but Link's own body felt much the same. He could not look at her as he walked, however he wished. Link was too afraid that he might fall over something in the negligence and be unable to reach his feet once more.

His legs seemed able to hold, though, and Link carried on through the disappearing world. Far ahead, something sat on a bleary horizon. This was not darkness, though, and nothing certain, but not of the spiritual realm. All Link knew he must reach that place. His legs struggled to hold him as arms struggled to hold Malon, but somehow they both managed. Link tottered through a still-fading existence, hell-bent on something distant, all the while aware of the darkness. It resided in his mind like an itch and whispered of its own survival. This was not done, not by a thousand years done. Somewhere it waited, or else was hunting. Link could feel it there, embedded like a splinter, and never to be removed. The darkness waited. Even at this moment, Link could not let himself forget that. Maybe he had succeeded once, but that was only a single act of their battle.

Maybe Link could leave this place, but that was only for a moment. He knew this and could pretend nothing else. And the darkness knew this, and watched him leave. Soon, so soon, there would be blood. With a silent voice of dead ages, it crooned to itself, mad and terrible and joyful in all that. Death would come, would finally exist where the toy of life did now. Soon bodies would be broken, it said, and soon would come an end.

Though his ears received no noise, Link knew every word of the distant monologue. In a different language, he spoke it to himself. There was Malon in his arms, and grief for the approaching tragedy, and then a deep and awful weariness. The bones of his body wavered with each movement, but far beneath he ached a fuller ache. Despite the madness, Link felt certain that there must be some rest from this seemingly relentless turmoil. Between loss and the coming tragedy, would there be even a moment's respite?

He was forced to relent in ignorance, and to clamber across sand, vying for what safety he could. Not his own, for that was impossible, but for Malon. All that mattered in this time was to take her away from the darkness, and to destroy it before the shadow was capable of reaching her. That was the only justice possible now, and Link would tear himself apart to grant it to her.

* * *

_All that I needed, I never needed more_

_Beyond reprieve, what could he wish for? Pain soaked to every corner of his consciousness now, but somehow Link had a wish greater than simple escape: just another moment with her, to see her eyes and hear her voice. Link wanted to say he loved her. He wished for more time, but these were wishes that could never be granted. She was too far away now, and Link lay on the edge of death._

_And most of all, there was a faint noise from farther up the tunnel. A shuffle? A scratch? Maybe a hiss or a whisper of evil intent? It did not matter what vibration marked its passage, because any would mean the same. Those were all voices of the same hated end._

_The darkness was here. Finally here, and headed down after him. Link tried to scowl as he had before, but the strength seemed to have gone away. All that remained was dreadful, cutting conviction. It ended here, so there could be no turning around. There never was any chance of that, but still Link recognized the final moment of imaginary possibility. The last way out was gone, and Link had been sealed in with his fate._

_He had since the moment of birth._


	8. Leaving the Sleeping Angel

_And all of my endings are waiting to begin_

_Link strained his ears to hear the darkness's slow approach. That was a rasp against the floor, a wheezing movement which told of the enemy's wounds. That would have been an advantage if Link were not wounded just as grievously. He was a corpse waiting to fight a corpse, and in the end they would both die. That was how it was meant to happen._

_Link wrapped his fingers around the sword's hilt, gripping tighter and tighter until knuckles strained and popped. The sword was old, but he was older. Link and the darkness, Link and his shadow, they were remnants of the beginning and that eternal interplay of light and darkness. One lay burned and bleeding inside a slightly fire lit cavern, while the opposite dragged itself forward to final finish this incarnation of their terrible struggle._

_And, battered as he was, Link could only wish for that same end._

* * *

Every footstep carried agony and waves of exhaustion which threatened to finally submerge him, but Link kept on against it all. Malon still dangled across his arms, still unconscious and in danger. So long as he lived, the darkness would, and so long as that nightmare prowled, she would be in danger.

Link struggled up the endless steps, leaning too far forward to keep from slipping back. The stones were grey, worn and grey. The lifting of each foot became tremendous effort, but Link could not cease his ascent. A stray glance down showed her there, innocent and so horrendously affected by the tragedy at hand. Link could not escape this, but she could. Link fought against gravity and stone and eternal weariness to bring her somewhere safe, somewhere safer. Her home was gone because of him, but at least Malon could live. She had survived that and she would survive this. These were the only consolations Link could fathom.

The steps leveled into a mute, green plateau. Some buildings lay about, but they stood like skeletons and gravestones, or else paper effigies of what should have been there. The town was without life, without people, and without voices. There was only Link, and there was only Malon. He stumbled along, holding her close for dear life. She was the only part of his reality that remained. Malon was happiness, the only happiness that had ever existed for Link. Now he pushed his way through the inn doors, knowing that for each step he must relinquish her sooner. There could be no other way but to put her in danger, and Link could never do that.

It did not take long to reach the room. Link wished for that trek to last eternity but there could be no such allowance. Just a few steps, only a dozen seconds, however he stretched it. Then Link was standing back between the two beds and setting Malon down onto the one still unoccupied. It was all just as he had seen before: Ingo pressed to the wall and Talon prostrate, halfway beneath a bed. The same mess as before and the same gaping hole that had housed the blade of his useless sword for a short while.

Malon went down softly onto the bed and did not move. Her arms lay sprawled about, and her hair was thrown to one side as if blown there. Somehow, in sleep, she had found a slight smile. Link wanted to kiss her, or to touch her, or to just say her name, but that could have ruined everything. Here, in this absolute calm, was how Link wanted to remember her. If that kiss woke her up, she would cry and feel the terrible weight of all that was happening, and there would be nothing good left in this world. But here, asleep and unaware, Malon was an angel and a heaven at once. Link stood over her and watched, smiling. All the evils were forgotten in her presence.

"Link… I…" she breathed and he could not move. Link was unable to move for watching and waiting and listening for whatever might come next. This was his whole world, these final words. "Link… we should… go to the lake…" She whispered this, as if the words were seeping over from the distant place she visited now in dreams. There they were speaking, or fishing, or sitting around, or maybe just laying by that cool beach. They were happy together there.

Link began to cry.

"Of course…"

The noise of his voice terrified Link, and the warbling sob that each syllable carried. He wanted to lean over, to kneel down, and promise her everything. Yes, they would to go to the lake, and they would see so many things. Maybe they could go swimming. Had they ever gone swimming together? No. And that was the spike in Link's frail heart. So many things they had never done, and things they had never seen. Promises that were being torn to tatters by the unyielding ram of fate. What had they wanted to do?

Everything.

It had seemed the whole world was calling out to them, just to them, and inviting them to enjoy it as only they could. They had, they had tried, but what major fraction of joys had just been swept away? What had they lost? Link gazed down at Malon and loosed another sob he could not stop.

Everything.

Link didn't kneel, though. He was afraid that if he came any closer to Malon, he would be unable to leave. Just the thought of it in bare words was painful. Instead, Link took a step back and looked around. There was a small desk set against the wall, just between the beds. Link went for that, opened a drawer to find a few sheets of paper and a pen stowed away inside.

The letter didn't take long to write. Link wrote that he was leaving, that he had to. That he was headed into the desert to destroy the darkness, but that this act would kill him as well. He wrote that there was no other way, there really wasn't. He had tried, oh goddesses he had tried, but there was nothing else. At the bottom of the page, Link struggled for words. What could he say? Would anything make this okay or adequately express the grief Link faced for this? Not for his fate but for what that meant for her.

In the end, Link wrote only six words, but at absolute, base value, they expressed his intentions.

_I love you and I'm sorry._

What else was there? Link loved Malon more than anything else, more than life itself. He loved her above all else, and was sorry that he did. He was sorry that he had married her only to leave her a widow. He was sorry that he had ever met her, because of this pain she would be put through. Maybe some days would not have been so bright for her without him, but the goddesses knew that nothing was worth this.

Link set the letter near Malon, and then headed for the door. If he did not leave now, he would be unable to. He had his hand on the doorknob when Ingo spoke. His was a weak voice, just a trickle of words, but they stopped Link dead in his tracks.

"Where you going?"

Link turned around to find the man still lying down. His eyes were open, though, and trained deliberately forward.

"I'm going to go fight it," Link said, and Ingo nodded.

"That dark thing, huh? You gonna kill it?"

Link wanted to say yes, and he wanted to say no, and he wanted to be able to be unsure. Instead he just stood there silently, and Ingo seemed to glean something from this.

"Oh… give it a good fight then."

Link looked at him without response, and the man drifted back into sleep. Maybe that was not true wakening, but some kind of fever? Ingo had seemed different, his personality more placid. Maybe he had somehow sensed that this was not the time for games of antagonistic behavior. It did not matter. He left the inn, fearing that if he waited the act would become impossible. There was no reason to wait once Malon was out of sight. What else was a reason to stay? He hurried out of the town, still dead empty, and away across the field.

He did not think as he moved, and did not look around. Men headed toward their deaths were said to appreciate the natural beauty in things, but Link's was a greater despair for knowing of that cycle. This was not death, only short, forced sleep between tortuous days.

In some time, the grass turned to sand and Link was headed out across the shifting desert surface. Finally, Link came to stand atop a dune and saw the darkness out in the distance. It had stood there, waiting for him. Now Link drew his sword and stood before its menace. The darkness was moving, lumbering forward.

This time, Link would lay in wait.

* * *

_All of my questions are answers to my sins_

_Here it was, and Link knew there was no escape. There had never been any. This was what needed to happen, because without this everything would unravel, and Malon would go with it all. Here was the end, and only now did Link find himself fearing that void. There was no escaping it, though. He steeled himself for death and for the preceding pain that lay just moments off._


	9. Final Questions Toward Pain

_I know the way, but I falter_

_The weak fingers of his off hand curled around a withered, smoldering torch. The fire which perched crippled by the tip was sweltering, but necessary. Every inch of his skin wanted to pus thing away for the pain it brought, but he could not. Link wasn't sure how well he could lift his sword, and the darkness was not far away._

_A dull spot of recognition flared in the back of that frayed mind, and Link forced his knees to tortuously unbend. It was a struggle to pull himself up, but there was no more time. His arms shook, his whole body shook, but Link somehow managed to keep a grip on the sword and to lift the torch overhead._

_Shadows melted away before that flickering light, all but one._

* * *

The distance closed by moments. The monolith, the darkness, and all those evils together which had always been one. It approached and stayed still, surely until that final second of distance melted away. Link's hand grew tight around the hilt of his sword, as tight a grip as he could force it into. Link didn't dare look, but he knew that there were more scars all across his body: burns from contact with the darkness. They were splotches and some straight lines and jagged edges, all carved into his flesh by that cruel thing's existence.

Those were the places he had begun to disappear. Link knew that was it. As he fought the darkness, it was not a matter of swords but of flesh. Their wounds were one. For every burn that had dug its way into Link's body, there was surely something similar etched at the darkness. They mirrored each other, and would continue that trend until death.

The darkness approached in its grand form, but Link saw a stagger to that movement. It was not obvious, but it existed and so proved Link's idea. It was breaking as it broke Link. They would die together, killed in turn for killing each other. That was why there could be no escape. If Link survived, the darkness would too.

Something came down, monstrous and quick. Link had only enough time to abandon his reveries and fall aside from its path. Still, something streaked down along his back flesh and left a rawness. Link's shirt fell limply forward and he knew it was disappeared behind, and the flesh beneath as well. He could not ignore the terrible absence as he climbed back to his feet. Something was missing, horribly and noticeably missing. His muscles did not align or connect correctly anymore. Link could lift his arm, but only just.

There could be no time longer than a second devoted to the examination of this loss, though. The darkness did not pause its onslaught for Link to explore the destroyed muscles. It accepted its own wounds from the contact and moved on ahead toward their mutual end.

A second strike only missed Link's body by some fraction of an inch, but he was able to twist away and plant his sword into that dark, strange flesh. It remained as it was in the other world: solid and unreal. The blade stuck fast, and continued in this as the darkness wrenched its arm back. Link was pulled through the air, and that air flew by so quickly that he could hardly capture any of it into his lungs. The blade in Link's hand buzzed and grew hot beneath his fingers.

Link's feet dangled in the air, and he did not dare look down at or past them. He could only gulp a breath once the travel had ceased and decide an action from there. The darkness howled its pain even as a second hand ran toward Link.

With a painful, jerking swing, Link was able to tear his sword out of the quivering black flesh and threw himself around toward the new hand. He could not tell how high up he was, and did not dare look during that flurry of descent. All Link thought of was the hand that flew upward even as he fell.

He landed in the outstretched palm and drove his sword straight through. A dark mist reared up around his feet as he did this, and Link could only watch as he sank deeper into the strange, black nonform. It welled up around the lips of his boots and poured inside. The acid bit away at his shins and ankles and feet and Link could not stand. He crumbled down into the palm and the horror only became worse.

Link screamed, and the darkness bellowed from somewhere far off. Mutual devastation went on for an eternity until Link was once again falling. The air was fast but the ground moved slowly upward. Burns stretched all over, but Link could only wonder where the darkness had gone away to. Was this death a success, or a failure? If it did not die, then could he? Was there possibility of a loss other than flight?

The corner of Link's eye showed him the darkness in its own descent. That monolith had finally lost its form and reverted to what Link had seen once, just the day before. It was once more a blur, a splotch of strange shadow, a patch of distorted existence.

So they were both gone, and this was the end. Link tried to look down at the earth and welcome it, but he could not see past the rushing gale wind. Tears flew from his eyes and away into the sky, but he could not tell if they were caused by the air or something internal.

It was not at first clear exactly what had happened. All Link knew was the impact, and the pain. Oh the pain. It was everywhere, burning through every crease of the world and digging down to places Link had never known. It was inside him and etched in through his mind. The pain was everything, and still growing. Oh goddesses it was growing!

Link's body was a squirming toy, a dying fish. He could not control those frantic movements, only watch as the body screamed out physical madness. He landed, rebounded, climbed, ran without legs, wriggled, and clawed at the sand and his eyes.

There was no thought in the midst of that madness, only physical reactions, and the physical reaction toward pain is flight. Link scrambled down the long, long side of that dune and rolled over himself to the bottom. Oh goddesses there was sand in his eyes and under the still scarring wounds. He could feel it there, itching inside the rough skin.

He could not move, but his body did. Link could not make his fingers unclench, but both hands grappled insanely at the ground ahead. He could not stand, no his legs were too damaged, but Link peaked the next dune and slid away again. There was darkness here, no, an absence of light. The darkness? Where had it gone to?

Shadows stretched all around and, in that cool and dark place, Link could final fall into ragged breath and tears. And thoughts. This pain, that fall… He must have landed atop the darkness's whole form. Yes, that was it. Link remembered that last, strange second as he saw the body ahead. An empty hand tried to map out Link's wounds, but soon stopped as there were too many and they were too terrible.

Link threw his empty hand out and pulled himself a foot along the floor. Sand and stone scraped against his sore body but, miraculously, there was no world-ending agony. All Link could do from there was to try something further. He grasped at the stone beneath him and pushed. Link went up onto his knees but lost his balance and tumbled to the side.

There it as: the awful, rending pain. It had returned to course through his body in stabbing waves.

He now stared back out at the world, Link saw the desert, and the mouth of this cave that shielded him form the sun. He was tempted to stop there, to just pause and lie still, but there was thick sand in the air and a trail of dark blood was plainly visible across the sand and stone. If the darkness lived, that would lead it to him in moments.

And of course the darkness lived.

Link pushed again and managed to stagger onto crippled legs. There was something missing from them, and he could not keep his balance, but Link moved along faster than a crawl. He leaned on the sand smoothed wall and stumbled along, searching for… What was there? Link knew there was nothing to find, but he moved forward anyway.

There was a light ahead, something red and fluctuating. Link moved along toward that, dreamlike and disassociated from the pain which should have thrown him into unconsciousness. Between scrapes and pops, Link listened to his sword rasp against the stone. He should have left it behind, but he couldn't move the fingers on that hand.

A torch had been affixed to the wall of the cave recently, and still burned in that socket. Around it were scrawled words he could not read, and some apparently ancient pictures drawn. Link glanced at them for a moment and knew a strange, alien sort of dread. He could not understand anything of this, but somehow he knew it was the prophecy. Those undecipherable words had foretold everything that would happen to Link, and they had known all along. If only he had come here before and seen this.

It would have made no difference.

However, as Link looked upon the foreign tellings of his fate, he knew one thing. This cave was old, very old. Somehow he knew that the whole thing had started in this place. It was only a hunch, but what did that matter? What did anything matter?

Link sighed and took the torch. It slid easily from the socket and was warm in his hand. He remembered driving the darkness back with fire, once. That had not really worked, though. The darkness still got him in the end, and Malon's home was gone for that futile attempt.

His legs were suddenly too weak for anything, and Link felt them slipping away beneath him. Link turned and buckled down against the wall, slowly sliding down to the coarse floor. He let his head rest back against the stone. Link's whole body was distant and void. He could not lift his sword, and that did not matter. The torch lay flat against the floor, sputtering and dying in that rough contact. Link wished that he had left it up on the wall, that way it could burn a little longer. Now it would die with him.

Link tried to look at the cave, but could not see it for the shadows which swallowed everything. Instead, he let his head fall to the side, and was somehow unsurprised by what he saw there. This was the final piece of his puzzle, the last unsolved mystery of the past. Everything was finished now, explained.

Just a few feet away, a younger Link lay sprawled against the wall. His head was set back against the wall, and his eyes were closed. The other Link breathed slowly, trying to recover from the madness outside. It did not take a moment for Link to remember this day.

"It's you…"

It surprised Link to hear his broken voice. It was hoarse, and full of pain. That noise could hardly belong to him, but it did match his frame. The other Link sat up and glanced around for the source of that voice before finally settling with wide, curious eyes on Link.

"It's… been forever," he groaned, "I can't believe it. There you are…"

It was strange to see himself before it all. He had been so tortured before, but… goddesses it only got worse.

"It's coming… the end. It's closer than you think"

"What do you mean? The other Link asked, his voice rasping. "The end of what?"

It broke Link's heart to realize that the broken form in that strange cave had been him. It broke his heart to hand back this terrible news, and his wounds were salted for knowing the message would go unheeded.

"Everything…" Link said. He could not stop himself. The words just poured out. Link coughed, and coughed again and a spasm of pain shook his body. Everything burned. "Don't let her go. It all happened so quick…"

"What do you mean? The other Link asked, suddenly alert. "Who are you talking about? What is this?

Link remembered the panic and fear that had coursed through him as this conversation went on. Still, he could not stop. He did not realize he was crying until water had filled the air. Link could hardly see, so he looked directly over at the other.

"This is… the end. There's no time. You can't stop it. It's all over. Don't waste it…"

Maybe this time… no. There was never any escape. Even with warning there could be none. All Link could manage was to warn himself from wasting whatever time was left.

"The darkness is…" he said suddenly, unable to keep these terrible words back, "It's so hungry…"

And then he was gone, leaving Link to lie alone in that cave. He was still crying, but could not stop himself. And worse, there was movement somewhere toward the cave's mouth.

* * *

_I can't be afraid of my patience_

_Link did not move. He just stood there staring at what the darkness had become. Fear dug into his gut and made its parasitic nest. And relief filled his heart. Malon was safe, and so far away from him. That was the only happiness Link could imagine as he stared down at this evil. Something burned inside of Link and he knew it was time._


	10. Forever

Link lay sprawled across the cave floor. Flickering light from the torch played shadows all over its looming walls. Strange, but the air here seemed to be frozen as it touched Link's body. It stung in his wounds just as the dripping sweat did.

It was out there: that nameless thing, that darkness. Nameless, but it must have been ageless. Nameless, but it knew Link's name. Surely it had known that forever. Ever since the birth of darkness, Link's name had gone slicking through its foul mind. Surely it had known his name, because that shadow had been tracking him from the day he was born. And Link didn't know if he could run any longer.

Give me the dust of my fathers.

That heavenly ash and ancient debris of vacated memories. Hand over the shattered fragments of what was, and what led to this. There were fingerprints of old stained across the whole of things to lend a dark and bleeding hue.

It all came down. Now Link felt those eternally tremorous inchings. The stuck stone beneath began to shake. It had taken to this as he himself convulsed, and that stole away feeling of it. This breaking apart of bindings was nothing new, and such a fact struck deepest chords of fear.

Stand on the face of the ancients

The ancients: the shadow and Link. They'd been running round this circle for so long that the beginning wasn't even real anymore. All they had was this track. That overshadowed everything. Link didn't know if anything was real outside of that conflict. The air felt hot in his lungs, but all Link knew was the he felt cold.

Bare the secret flesh of time itself

Link had done everything he was supposed to. He had left behind his childhood to protect a future he didn't know. He had fought to save a world that wasn't his, all for the one light in it all. He had done this and set it free in the process. The only way he could have avoided this was to let Hyrule burn, to decay and fall apart. The goddesses knew he wouldn't do that, couldn't, and so he was locked into the cycle. The cruel irony was that only in ending could the cycle progress.

Follow me

Like a lamb to slaughter. Link had been taken straight to the end, and nothing could stop him. Nothing could save him. Of course, that was because he couldn't even save himself. The shadow was out there, somewhere. It had probably found the mouth of the cave by now. It was coming for him. The shadow could feel him: where he had been and where he was. The most perfect tracking: to be tied like string. Forever like a length of damned string. The tie went both ways as Link felt the darkness there at the edge of his mind. It squirmed like an itch in his head, always desperate in its advance. The darkness was coming. The darkness was always coming.

Follow me

In the end, there were only two. The pain that screamed for him to stop, and the deep drumming voice that senselessly said go on. Drums worked feet into motion, and Link had marched into the mouth of his enemy. No fire could turn him back. No fear could send him away. As he had been so long ago, upon finding himself alone in a loveless world, Link was a machine. He moved with one goal, and nothing remained in the world that could appease the fuel deep inside. Link marched into the desert, toward his own death, rather than that of the world.

I've come so far I'm behind again

He had tried so hard, though. Link had fought every step of the way and grappled each day with fate. He'd been dragged back by what must happen and he'd overcome. Link had found a way through the night and back to her. So many times this had happened, but never again. How could it when there were only two options? Either die or let it all burn…

All he'd done was for nothing. That sentiment stabbed through Link and taunted every wound. Before, he'd endured the pain of his broken body for knowing he would return to Malon. He'd pushed through it all, knowing that he must return. But there could be no returning. He'd fought so long for what was always damned away from him, though that had never been so apparent as now.

Follow me

Down into the nothing. Through the darkness, through the blackness, and deep into what lay beyond. All the meaning was gone, and all the hope. Only a few certainties remained, and they were all tortuous. The darkness was certain, but that would go. For a short time, Link was certain, but he too would disappear. The world would remain, but surely in a different place. What could follow the loss of all certainties? Past the nothing which lay behind all existence, and into another place which was not really real. There wasn't really anything, was there? Only the blood of when he fought the darkness, and the blood which came before. Was there anything between? Of course not, because what torture would that be? All Link had was the times he fought, and the times before that he did not know well enough to enjoy. Soon enough they were gone, both were gone, leaving only nothing.

I wish so hard I'm there again

And she swam in Link's head like the air in his lungs. There was never a moment that Malon escaped from his thoughts, because she was the only thing left to keep him grounded. She was the stone that protected him from slipping off into grim territory and the pained destruction that had always haunted the edge of his world. Malon had lived this role since childhood, since the first moment they met. Link remembered it all so fondly, so clearly. Her memory was the most important thing in the world to him, and the countless happy days they had spent together. Those scenes were the only happiness left for him. Everything else had taken the shade of nightmares but, if Link just closed his eyes, he would be with Malon again.

All that I wanted were things I had before

What he wouldn't give to be back there with her, just once more. Link would tear down the stones of this cavern until it was dust, just to feel her skin once more, to smell her hair. To see her sleeping and to have just one more kiss. Just once more. That could never happen, though, because the only way to save her was to be without her forever.

All that I needed, I never needed more

Beyond reprieve, what could he wish for? Pain soaked to every corner of his consciousness now, but somehow Link had a wish greater than simple escape: just another moment with her, to see her eyes and hear her voice. Link wanted to say he loved her. He wished for more time, but these were wishes that could never be granted. She was too far away now, and Link lay on the edge of death.

And most of all, there was a faint noise from farther up the tunnel. A shuffle? A scratch? Maybe a hiss or a whisper of evil intent? It did not matter what vibration marked its passage, because any would mean the same. Those were all voices of the same hated end.

The darkness was here. Finally here, and headed down after him. Link tried to scowl as he had before, but the strength seemed to have gone away. All that remained was dreadful, cutting conviction. It ended here, so there could be no turning around. There never was any chance of that, but still Link recognized the final moment of imaginary possibility. The last way out was gone, and Link had been sealed in with his fate.

He had since the moment of birth.

And all of my endings are waiting to begin

Link strained his ears to hear the darkness's slow approach. That was a rasp against the floor, a wheezing movement that told of the enemy's wounds. That would have been an advantage if Link were not wounded just as grievously. He was a corpse waiting to fight a corpse, and in the end they would both die. That was how it was meant to happen.

Link wrapped his fingers around the sword's hilt, gripping tighter and tighter until the knuckles strained and popped. The sword was old, but he was older. Link and the darkness, Link and his shadow, they were remnants of the beginning. That eternal interplay of light and darkness. One lay burned and bleeding inside a slightly fire lit cavern, while the opposite dragged itself forward to final finish this incarnation of their terrible struggle.

And, battered as he was, Link could only wish for that same end.

All of my questions are answers to my sins

Here it was, and Link knew there was no escape. There had never been any. This was what needed to happen, because without this everything would unravel, and Malon would go with it all. Here was the end, and only now did Link find himself fearing that void. There was no escaping it, though. He steeled himself for death and for the preceding pain that lay just moments off.

I know the way, but I falter

The weak fingers of his off hand curled around a withered, smoldering torch. The fire which perched crippled by the tip was sweltering, but necessary. Every inch of his skin wanted to push the thing away for the pain it brought, but he could not. Link wasn't sure how well he could lift his sword, and the darkness was not far away.

A dull spot of recognition flared in the back of that frayed mind, and Link forced his knees to tortuously unbend. It was a struggle to pull himself up, but there was no more time. His arms shook, his whole body shook, but Link somehow managed to keep a grip on the sword and to lift the torch overhead.

Shadows melted away before that flickering light, all but one.

I can't be afraid of my patience

Link did not move. He just stood there staring at what the darkness had become. Fear dug into his gut and made its parasitic nest. And relief filled his heart. Malon was safe, and so far away from him. That was the only happiness Link could imagine as he stared down at this evil. Something burned inside of Link and he knew it was time.

There's a secret place that keeps me safe

As Link lifted his sword, its reflection mirrored that move. Finally, they were the same. Link stepped forward, but the darkness did not succumb to his advance. It retreated narrowly backward, holding its distance. That dark sword trailed on the floor much as Link's had, much as it soon would again if he were forced to hold it for any great time. But what would constitute a great time? How long did he have before the weakness overcame him?

The darkness was waiting for him to make the first move, so Link obliged as well as he could. He took another step and lashed out in a clumsy arc. The blade slid off its shadow wrought brother and struck the cool floor. A harsh noise sprang up from that contact. Link could do nothing but continue forward with the momentum, or else fall backward in a heap. The second strike dug deep into the darkness, biting past a sluggish defense.

Follow me

Link tore his blade out from the dark flesh and stabbed it in again. The darkness quivered and struck out at Link with its own blade. The dark sword ripped a hole in Link's thigh, and that left burned scars in its wake. Link could feel the meat of his body being torn away and destroyed. Was the darkness's sword equally injured by this? Was Link's?

It did not matter.

Link tore his blade out and stabbed it again, and again and again. The darkness was shaking, and Link could not keep from joining it. The whole world seemed to tremble around their conflict. The torch dangled from his right hand and cast shadows all about as they fought. Disorientating scenes played over the walls, but Link could not pay attention to the mock enemies all about. The darkness cut him again, ruined another portion of flesh with dark steel and evil. Blood ran freely and dripped down to the floor. It seemed there were no more safeties of scarring, only the coming end.

I've seen so much I'm blind again

He stabbed it again and again, and with coming strikes the darkness began to shrink away from him. That dark body was quivering across the floor, either in flight or seizure or fear. Some hope slipped through Link at this sight. Was this its death? Could it be possible that he was killing it? They had said it would never die without him, but here he lived and it died. Maybe he had beaten their game this time. As Link drove his sword into the darkness once more, he thought that maybe, just maybe, he could see Malon again.

Follow me

The darkness was at his feet, shaking, shivering. It did this so violently that the cavern shook along with it. Dust and gravel cascaded from the unseen ceiling and fell across them in handfuls. Link stabbed the darkness again, and it screeched out something painful. That dark sword flew upward in a feeble strike, missing Link's heart by too far to catch anything but his wrist. It was surely losing its strength, and here he could still stand. That reflection lay across crumpled across the floor and hardly moving. The torch fell from his injured arm and into the dark mass. Its light was instantly swallowed by the crippled body.

I feel so bad I'm alive again

In his sudden blindness, Link could do nothing to find the darkness. He slashed his sword at the place it had occupied, but the attack was met with a useless clash of metal on stone. Link waved his blade at the air straight ahead, hoping to mar the shadow in flight. He struck at something which trembled, but then the body was gone. The darkness was fleeing, but not away from Link. It was not fleeing away from anything, but toward a light which hung further toward the cave mouth.

Follow me

Link could only stare at that light for a moment, confused. Was that a torch? A lantern? Why would there be… The observation fell to a halt as Link noticed the nearby movement. Link advanced on the darkness and was about to drive his sword in when a voice called out, echoing across the cave walls and down into Link's ears. There the words spawned dread.

"Link, are you there?

All that I wanted were things I had before

Everything became ice. A thousand questions raged through Link's mind as he struggled to force his legs toward motion. How had Malon found this place? The darkness was already flying off in that direction. He'd left the general location in that damn letter. What had compelled him to do that? He should have seen this coming. Oh goddesses, what if it reached her first? He loved her more than all the world and the darkness knew that. It was moving toward her so fast. After such a long time clamped there, Link heard his sword finally drop to the stone below. He couldn't let it outrun him. There was no more time.

Oh goddesses…

All that I needed, I never needed more

Link ran faster than he ever had. His body was broken and torn apart but he ran. Everything was uncertain and each step seemed to swing him about but he ran. How many muscles were already gone? What if he couldn't run fast enough? Maybe the darkness would reach her first. Link saw what would happen then. It would destroy her, and he would be forced to watch that. To watch the only thing he loved die.

He couldn't let that happen. Zelda had told him, and the goddesses had told him what needed to happen. Told him how he would die. And now the time had come. Link threw himself forward and flew down toward the darkness. He landed roughly on top of it, and felt the corrosive bite of it digging into him. Link grappled with it as the thing squirmed, but he did not let go despite the searing, throbbing pain.

All of my questions are answers to my sins

And it was just like he had known. Link absorbed the darkness even as he infected. They were both going away, and that was a slow, horrible process. He would fade to nothing form each point of contact, as they both consumed each other.

But Malon was here. He saw here through the corner of his eye, saw her staring. It would happen and nothing could change that, but Link couldn't let her watch. He looked up at her as best he could.

"Malon…" He groaned as the burning took out his bones. It was torturous, unbearable, but he could do nothing. "Malon… turn off. The lan… tern…" It was a lantern, but what did that matter? What did anything matter except getting her away? "Get... out…"

But she couldn't move. The lantern had fallen from her grasp and lay cracked, burning across the cave floor. Malon could only stare down at the terrible transformation he underwent: slowly burning out of existence. She couldn't do it, so Link would for her. He pulled himself across the floor, scraping his raw body against that. It felt as if bones were broken by very movement and surely they were.

With one last burst of effort, Link threw himself over the small fire. Glass and metal crunched beneath him, and the flame sizzled for a moment. That died, and then there was silence.

All of my endings were waiting to begin

There was nothing but darkness and that distant slit of the cave mouth.

"Malon… go…" Link sputtered. Soon he would be unable to speak for the destruction of his lungs.

"I... I can't leave you here…" She was crying. Link heard it in her voice, and it pained him almost as much as dying.

"Leave…" his voice was frail, brittle, on the verge of collapsing.

"I can't."

Link wanted to reach out and touch her, to wipe the tears out of her eyes and to hold her and tell her it was going to be all right. But he couldn't, because Link hardly had the strength to breathe. All the remaining breath went into one final phrase.

"Malon, go. Please… go. Leave and forget me."

Beyond that he could say no more. There was silence, and Link knew she was gone.

Link hoped that she could be happy again, somehow. However, a voice returned to his mind. It was old, older than everything. In desperation before he had not heard it, or not understood. While Link fled, one of the goddesses had called something after. Now it returned in full voice.

"You can't save her."

He had, though. Link had protected her from the darkness. She was safe. She was alive.

But, Link realized, he couldn't save her from his death.


End file.
